About March 2007 (less frequent AKN&I updates)

This January I finished my Master’s degree. In case you are interested, I did an MA in English Studies, specialising on theoretical linguistics and especially so syntactic theory, but also getting additional degrees in Australian Studies and English Language Pedagogy.

Although I currently live elsewhere, I was actually born and raised in Finland and remain a citizen of that country. (Like Kurosawa, I actually consider myself a citizen of the world — I have lived in enough countries to not feel particularly attached to any of them.) Now, Finland happens to be one of the few countries in Europe where compulsory military service is still in place, and having postponed my own participation for as long as I possibly could, it has now come to a point where I actually have to go and do that civic duty. I am, therefore, moving to Finland in a couple of weeks’ time.

The bad news is that I will be spending the next 13 months in that Nordic country, which is not where I would really want to be at this point in my life. I am also not exactly happy about having to spend a year of my life doing something that I would not really be doing if I had some say over these matters.

The good news is that I have been able to opt out from the actual military service and do it as civil service instead. So, rather than playing cowboys and Indians in the arctic forests, I will be working for the Finnish Dramatists’ Union, and I am actually even partly looking forward to it despite of my lack of understanding what sort of strategic significance it serves for the country as a whole. Things could certainly be worse.

What this all boils down to is that I will be spending most of the coming March in a preparatory camp before starting my actual work service in April. At the moment I have no idea how well I will be connected to the Internet in March, so I thought that it might be polite of me to mention all this to the regular readers among you. If the information flow seems to die at some point, you will know why.

Things should get more or less back to normal in April, which is when I start my work service. If everything goes as planned, I should by then have a flat in Helsinki with an Internet connection. As the work service is comparable to having a normal job with its 8 hour work days and weekends off, I should from that point onwards be able to update the site as I have done previously.

So, I apologise for any possible silent periods that may follow after March 1st (my flight to Finland). I will keep you updated about what is going on as well as I can.

Congrats, on your Master’s Degree, and I hope everything turns out well for you, during your service to your country.

When I was in college, for Theoretical Psychics, I had to take a course in Linguistics, am positive you would consider it a breeze, but to me it was hell and cost me a horrible grade. 🙂

I dropped out of college 🙁 and left behind my psychics knowledge to enter the movie industry. When I first started out, the production company I used to work for, I believe had dealings with the Finnish Dramatist Union. I could be completely wrong about this, but that name seems awfully familiar. Just thought the minor connections between to two of us, was funny.

Thanks, guys. I think I’ll survive. It’s actually mainly the loss of a year that bothers me. I’d much prefer continuing with a PhD in theoretical linguistics straight away.

On the other hand, you never know what life throws at you when you do novel things, so in that sense I am certainly looking forward to all this.

Jeremy — for the last year and a half of my studies I worked at my university as an assistant teacher, so I know how linguistics may at first seem confusing and strange to students. 🙂 I think it did that to me, too, when I started out.

Funny that Dramatists’ Union connection. It is entirely possible that the production company you worked for dealt with them, as they seem to be doing some international things as well.